


Sweater Weather

by archangelgaybriel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 05:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5485517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archangelgaybriel/pseuds/archangelgaybriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sam hisses, elbowing Gabriel who in turn just shushes him, eyes fixed on the very lost Dean Winchester, standing at the side of the room looking as if he's doing his utmost best to blend in with the wallpaper.</p><p>“The bestest,” Gabriel reassures him, fingers curled into two makeshift binoculars which rest over his eyes. “Give it a couple minutes and it’ll all work out. You’ll see.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweater Weather

**Author's Note:**

> It's done!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 100% of this was written _after_ 12am so if anything just... sounds weird, yes, blame it on the fact that half my common sense and my entire ability to know if something is a good idea or not gets taken away when it gets late. I had to google "sweater" in order to think of something and I came across someone talking about how they accidentally wore an ugly Christmas sweater to a fancy party and somehow this was birthed?
> 
> This work is done as part of the destiel christmas minibang over on tumblr! I've been paired up with the lovely [malallory](http://malallory.tumblr.com) who's made [this](http://malallory.tumblr.com/post/135648982517/destiel-christmas-mini-bang-prompt-sweaters) which you should definitely go and check out because it looks WONDERFUL thank you so much!!! :D <3 <3 <3

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sam hisses, elbowing Gabriel who in turn just shushes him, eyes fixed on the very lost Dean Winchester, standing at the side of the room looking as if he's doing his utmost best to blend in with the wallpaper.

They’re both huddled behind a wall, foreheads peeking out from the side, just enough for their eyes to glance over the corner, watching as their two oblivious brothers bumble about the room like two thorns in a sea of fancy, lavishly dressed santa, elf and reindeer roses.

“The bestest,” Gabriel reassures him, fingers curled into two makeshift binoculars which rest over his eyes, which are darting between the two. “Give it a couple minutes and it’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

Right on the other end of the room there’s a flash of a hideously bright grey sweater that catches Dean’s attention from the corner of his eye, but then it’s lost as quickly as it appeared in the throng of people. Curious, he moves away from the wall, wanting to see who the other poor soul was, whom he guesses showed up unintentionally in an intentionally ugly sweater.

From the other side of room, Gabriel elbows Sam back excitedly, too hard maybe, and all he gets is a pained grunt in response.

* * *

**_Two days earlier_ **

Castiel’s phone buzzes. There’s a slight pause as he gives it a quick glance, then a hand reaches out to grab it, just as it buzzes again. This time the hand hesitates, hovering over the cell. It buzzes again, then again. Then again. The hand retreats, back to the keyboard.

**YO lil bro! wats up? dis is urgent. call me -g**

**stop working 4 once n give ur big bro a call -g**

**this is super important.. we gotta talk! -g**  

**call me or ill come over n dance naked on the table. i know ur friend balthazar will like that ;-P -g**

**i got something to tell u. LIFE OR DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! call me. -g**

The phone doesn’t cease its buzzing. By now, Castiel knows exactly who is messaging him.

His hands resume their typing. The small bubble of space which is Castiel’s cubicle is now filled with the sound of fingers tapping rapidly against the keyboard and the incessant buzzing of a deliberate ignored phone. Castiel picks up his coffee cup calmly and takes a very calm sip of his drink.

A head pops up from the cubicle directly in front of him. Tuft of blonde hair, a cheeky smile, twinkling eyes.

“Cassie,” a heavily accented voice begins. “Not everyone needs to know that you just got Tinder and all your boy toys are sexting you.”

“Balthazar,” he greets, not bothering to look up. “It’s just my brother. He’ll get bored and stop after a while.”

His friend, unfortunately, doesn’t looked too convinced, reaching down to snatch his phone off the table. Castiel doesn’t bother to stop him either. There’s nothing that can escape Balthazar’s prying eyes and hands, not while the guy is still alive and kicking and curious. He sees all, a reality and a quality of his friend that Castiel has slowly come to tolerate and ignore.

“Your brother seems quite hasty,” Balthazar comments, but Cas just brushes it off. Gabriel’s always hasty - especially so when he wants his little brother to pick up a dozen doughnuts for him from Krispy Kreme on the way home. Balthazar scrolls and lets out a snicker. “He’s even threatened- no, sorry, _suggested_ to do a strip tease on your desk. He’s right about me not minding either.”

“‘Not minding’ is a very light choice of words,” Castiel remarks, then takes his phone back and stalks outside. If Gabriel wants to place orders for doughnuts, so be it; Castiel’s a kind, loving brother who sacrifices good minutes of his life daily to appease his kin. Once he’s somewhat out of earshot from his co-workers, he dials Gabriel’s number, who unsurprisingly picks up instantly.

“ _CASSIE_ ,” He booms. Castiel holds the phone a little farther away from his ear, forgetting his brother’s tendency to yell into tiny inanimate objects. “YOU CALLED. I’M IMPRESSED.”

“Hello, Gabriel. How are you?”

“GOOD, BLAH THE USUAL ANSWER. STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. SO THERE’S THIS CHRISTMAS PARTY, AND I’VE BEEN INVITED. I’M THINKING YOU SHOULD COME TOO. IT’S GONNA BE FUN, AND THERE ARE TONS OF NEW PEOPLE THERE YOU CAN MEET.”

Cas pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m really not interest-”

“YOU WON’T KNOW IF YOU DON’T TRY.”

“Parties aren’t really my thing.”

“WELL, THAT’S TOO BAD. I TOLD THE HOST YOU’RE COMING AND YOU’RE EXPECTED.”

Cas splutters. “Gabriel!”

“IT’S TOMORROW.” There’s a pause. “WEAR AN UGLY SWEATER,” he blurts. Then, rushes out, “IT’S AN UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER PARTY, OF COURSE.”

“Of course it is.”

“EXACTLY,” Gabriel sounds oddly triumphant, but his brother easily derives joy from success in unusual things so Castiel lets it slide. “I’LL PICK YOU UP TOMORROW EVENING AT SIX. DON’T BE LATE. AND REMEMBER, UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER.”

“Got it,” Castiel wants to say, but before he can get the words out, the line’s already dead. He sighs, and shoves his phone into his pocket.

An ugly Christmas sweater party, tomorrow. Just for one night. It won’t be too bad. It can’t.

* * *

Approximately an hours drive away from Castiel Novak’s office lies Dean Winchester, feet propped out on one end of the couch with his socks still on, lazily flicking through channels. There’s the telltale jingling of keys coming from outside the door, before it opens and in steps in his brother, 6’4” and consisting of long awkward limbs and notably long, brown hair. 

Sam drops his keys on the counter. “Why aren’t you at Bobby’s?”

“Ah,” Dean says, eyes never straying from the screen. Some cooking show is on; the stakes are high and one of the contestants is going to be kicked out real soon. “Jo begged me to swap shifts because some redhead she’s crushing on is coming.”

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Charlie?”

Dean tilts the beer bottle in his hand in silent affirmation. Meanwhile, his brother is shuffling his feet nervously, head turning with small, rapid swivels as if he’s looking for something. Whatever news his brother is going to feed him, Dean knows, isn’t going to be good, because Sam Winchester is obviously nervous and a terrible actor all at once.

“So there’s this-” He pauses to place an elbow on the table while _still standing_ (he’s too tall so his posture is all awkward now, body bending sidewards, but he doesn’t move, just continues looking very uncomfortable) and he clears his throat. Loudly. Twice. “Uh, party.” Dean lets out a low hum to prove he’s listening. “And I was thinking that, um, you should go for it.”

Dean is the kind of guy who likes parties - not overly so, but if you were to invite him the chances of him agreeing to go is almost a hundred percent. So he doesn’t understand why Sam’s looking like he hasn’t pooped for the week and is on the verge of bolting to the toilet.

He concludes that his brother is a terrible liar.

Dean narrows his eyes. “What else?”

“It’s, well,” Sam stands up properly again and raises, then drops his hands back to his sides, his fingers twitching. He’s purposely ignoring eye contact with Dean, staring instead at the rug like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s seen in a while. “It’s a ugly Christmas sweater party.”

An ugly Christmas sweater party? He hasn’t been to one in a while, and those are _fun_ as hell, especially since everyone goes around mocking each other’s sweaters and puts too much alcohol in the eggnog. Anticipation sparks in him, and he’s positive he’s lighting up like a Christmas tree, but he doesn’t care. “I’m going.”

He’s preoccupied about thinking which one of his extensive collection of ugly sweaters - some bought intentionally, some gifted by relatives who didn’t give a rat’s ass - and maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice the mixture of relief and guilt on his brother’s face.

And maybe if he had, he wouldn’t be standing at the doorstep of some fancy ass house with streamers and limousines pulled up to the front of the house showing up in a hideously green sweater with ugly felt LED lights that look like they’re on the verge of dropping out any second complete with random colorful balls glued messily stuck on, only to find that _every other person in there was wearing impeccable suits and bowties and sparkly cocktail dresses_.

* * *

A disaster, nothing short of a huge, horrible, gigantic tragedy, is what this is. 

People are shooting looks at him from all corners of the room, wondering why in the hell this poor soul walked in with some hideous scrap of clothing that looked as though he went ransacking through the dumpster and could only find this. Humiliation, that he will endure.

He’s going to find Sam, and he’s going to squeeze the life out of him.

His brother is unfortunately, nowhere to be seen, despite promising Dean that “he’ll meet him there”. He makes his way into the kitchen where there’s less people, but all he gets is more stares and zero sightings of Sam, and he resigns to his fate.

It’s a prank, he realises now, and begrudgingly a small part of him admits that it’s a pretty good prank, albeit cruel. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent the photo of Sam passed out piss drunk to all of his friends, arms and legs draped over overturned furniture with his mouth open unattractively wide and drool at the corner.

There is still free food though, and free champagne, so Dean swipes some unidentifiable seafood thing from a tray and a glass of champagne. He retreats to the sides of the room where there’s a significantly less amount of people. By then, the stares and murmuring has lessened and people were back to minding their own business, and just as Dean thinks he’s done for the night and about to head home, he thinks he sees… another ugly sweater?

Curious, he moves away from the wall, navigating his way through the other guests and making sure not to bump into them. Which is difficult, because it’s pretty packed, but when he swivels his head he catches a glimpse of the ugly sweater again, and the guy who’s wearing it - slightly shorter than him, slightly unruly dark brown hair and electric blue eyes, looking lost. He edges closer and closer to the other man until they both see each other, and those pair of eyes widen in recognition and a hint of a smile creeps up his face.

“You too?” is the first thing Dean asks when he sees the guy, who just looks down at his sweater (with flowers, tinsels and… bells? pasted on them), and then looks up back at Dean and gives a half-hearted shrug.

“My brother told me it was going to be an ugly Christmas sweater party. Evidently, I was lied to,” the guy says, narrowing his eyes at the crowd of people dressed to the nines. Gears in Dean’s mind clicks. “Hey, wait, I was told it was going to be an ugly Christmas sweater party too!”

The man’s eyes widen again, and then his brow furrows. “His name is Gabriel Novak.”

“Sam Winchester,” Dean replies, then closes his eyes very, very slowly. He gets it now. He’s been full on punched in the face with the truth, and he’s still reeling from the impact of the realisation. It isn’t a prank, it’s a horrendous case of match-making, in which Cupid is deliberately cruel and cunning and bends unsuspecting couples to his will. “You don’t happen to be Castiel Novak, do you?”

“How did you know?” The guy says, frowning at him, and Dean lets out a sigh crossed with a laugh. “I would tell you, but…” he trails off, giving a once over to the elegantly dressed throng surrounding them, and then grins and turns back to Castiel. “How about we get out of here?”

* * *

“They’re leaving!” Sam hisses, and then groans. “Oh god, please don’t tell me they’re gonna do what we think they’re gonna do.” 

“It’s plausible,” Gabriel says slowly and worriedly. “Does Dean have keys to your apartment?”

“No, I was supposed to meet him here and then bring him home.”

“Cassie has keys to our apartment,” Gabriel says, and then thumps his head on the wall and lets out a very colourful string of curses. Sam offers him a consoling pat on the back, and tells him if that though his bed might break but it isn’t irreplaceable.

* * *

Roughly twenty minutes later, they’re both sitting at the booth of some diner, drinking milkshakes and complaining about the general idiocy of siblings. “Sam had long hair ever since he was a kid. People in school used to call him Samantha,” Dean says, and doesn’t mention that he too had long hair until he turned five. He then shows Cas the picture of his brother passed out, the same one he sent all Sam’s friends, and they have a good chuckle over it. 

Cas, in turn, tells Dean that Gabriel used to wet the bed even after he got into high school, and Dean files the information into “potential blackmail material”. He also tells Dean about how Gabriel always brings hook ups into the house and sometimes doesn’t make it to the bedroom, so he’s walked into some interesting activity while trying to get a glass of milk and seen much more of his brother and some stranger than he wants to.

“My brother has been pestering me to meet you for a while now,” Dean explains, and carefully leaves out the insinuation of fornication and the timespan of three months. “Told me you were the Gabriel’s brother and that we’d be really good friends. He always got frustrated when I told him I wasn’t interested, and by the way you speak about your brother, I’m guessing he coerced mine into taking matters into their own hands.” Dean finishes with a grin.

Cas just groans and presses the palms of his hands on his forehead. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill his whole family.” _You_ are _his family_ , Dean reminds, and Cas pointedly ignores the comment.

“Their plan worked,” Dean admitted, reclining on his seat and sighing. “I’ll go home and put his hand in warm water while he sleeps.”

“You do that, and then take a picture once it’s done and send it to me,” Cas says, and then they both take a sip from their milkshakes, descending into comfortable silence.

When they talk again, it’s about their life. Dean learns that Cas is a journalist and a dedicated one, and that he’s always wanted a cat to name it Sauron, that he doesn’t get out much according to pretty much everyone he who knows him, that he was always the top in his class and Gabriel would slap his back and call him a nerd as if it were a compliment, that he’s witty and funny and smart, that he’s adorable even when he’s wearing the most hideous creation since Donald Trump, and even more so when he’s rattling about some geeky stuff and has his arms propped up on the table and his chin resting on his hands.

Dean tells him about his work at the garage and his love for pie and how sometimes at night if you go to the rooftop you can see Mercury in the distance.

“It’s late,” is the first thing Cas says, but he doesn’t move, though he looks as if he’s going to get up any moment now. _Do it now, Dean_ , a part of him urges.

“It is,” Dean says lamely, and takes a glance at his watch. Almost midnight. He doesn’t say anything, and Cas is standing up and grabbing his coat, and it’s now or never. “Wai-”

“Here’s my number,” Cas pipes up before Dean can say anything, and he retrieves a pen from his pocket and scribbles down a series of numbers on the napkin, before sliding it over to Dean. He looks shy, hands tucked into his pockets, rocking on his feet. “In case you want to grab milkshakes at midnight and complain about our brothers again.”

  
“I’ll call,” Dean promises, and tucks the napkin into his pocket, the dazzling smile on Cas’ face warming his heart, and follows Cas out of the diner and into the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please leave kudos and comments and I'll give you my second borns and also $300,000 because my first borns are already given away. #denethor-ingintensifies


End file.
